PALO ALTO, Calif. – January 2, 2007 –Topix.net, a leading Internet news community, today announced the appointment of Wes Irish to vice president of operations. Reporting directly to Topix.net CEO Rich Skrenta, Irish will be responsible for building the team and networking infrastructure to support the Topix.net site’s rapid growth.

“In 2006, Topix.net saw explosive growth in our news communities, with forum posts jumping from zero to more than 20,000 a day,” said Skrenta. “As we plan for continued growth in 2007, Wes and his team will be critical to the stability, scalability and success of our site. We’re pleased to welcome him to the Topix.net team.”

Irish brings to Topix.net a wealth of technical, operational, and business experience from more than 25 years in the technology industry. Prior to joining Topix.net, Irish provided networking, systems, and security consulting as president of his firm, Coyote Hill Consulting LLC. He also held positions of director of networking systems at Stanford University and interim director of network services at San Jose State University.

Previously, Irish spent nearly two decades in Xerox’s Corporate Research Group, mostly at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). While at Xerox PARC, he was a key contributor to many projects related to networking and distributed systems, holding positions of senior network scientist, network manager, and chief technologist of technical infrastructure and systems development.

Irish’s work at PARC led to numerous patents, publications, and awards, including the prestigious Xerox Team Excellence Award.

About Topix.net
Topix.net is the leading news community on the Web, connecting people to the information and discussions that matter to them in every U.S. town and city. A Top 25 online news destination (Hitwise, November 2006), the company links news from 50,000 sources to 360,000 lively user-generated forums. Topix.net also works with the nation’s major media companies to grow and engage their online audiences through forums, classifieds, publishing platforms and RSS feeds. Based in Palo Alto, Calif.., Topix.net is a privately held company with investment from Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE: GCI), The McClatchy Company (NYSE: MNI) and Tribune Company (NYSE: TRB). For more information, visit www.topix.net.